15 February 2012 3:04 PM

You don’t have to be a parent for those very words to send a shiver down your spine.

The sickening sex attack on a toddler by the twisted nursery worker is not just beyond evil, it is beyond our comprehension.

And we are entitled to expect that society will be protected from beasts like 21-year-old Wilson until his dying breath.

Surely at the very least that is not too much to ask.

But no.

Britain’s most senior judge has just chopped 18 months off the 15 years minimum term handed down to depraved Wilson, jailed last year when he admitted twice raping the little girl at the nursery where he worked.

The reason given by Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge: That reducing his sentence might encourage other paedophiles to admit their crimes.

If there has ever been a more ridiculous and outrageous ruling from a law lord then I have never heard of it.

And far worse than that, it is a ruling that will directly impact on the future safety children.Because you can guarantee that Wilson – whenever he is freed – will go on to rape and assault children, because that sick obsession is what drives him.

Who knows, he may, like many other paedophiles, go on to murder.

So, far from encouraging other paedophiles to admit their crimes, this disgraceful judgement in itself could actually put more children in danger.

Because the monsters like Wilson, who silently trawl the internet and prowl the streets in search of children to molest, will be encouraged that the highest judge in the land has shown leniency towards a child sex beast.

What on earth was the Lord Judge thinking about?

A year ago, when Wilson was arrested, the country was horrified to learn that a trusted nursery worker had preyed on a little girl who should have been protected by the strict vetting guidelines governing people who work with children.

As details of his crimes unfolded, it transpired that during the abuse covering an 18 month period, he not only raped the little girl, but also blackmailed 22 girls, aged between 12 and 16 into performing sex acts for him online, having groomed them by posing as a teenage boy or a scout for a modeling agency.

And that is only the ones he admitted in court. We will probably never know how long he has been abusing children.

This was not some random pervert who stepped out of the shadows. Wilson was only 20 at the time of his arrest. He is clearly a serial child sex abuser destined for a lifetime of lusting after children.

At his original sentencing, Mrs Justice Macur called Wilson’s crimes ‘chilling, vile and depraved’, telling him: ‘You have humiliated and corrupted and defiled.’

But less than a year later, his lawyer went to court arguing that by pleading guilty he had spared a jury from having to see his depraved film.

And shockingly, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge accepted this, cutting Wilson’s minimum sentence by 18 months, and telling the court that this would encourage other paedophiles to admit their crimes.

Of the guilty plea, Lord Judge said: ‘We accept, that this step was taken to enable the distraught parents of the child to know that there would be no trial. They knew none of this repellent movie of the little girl would ever be shown in public. No one would ever see that little girl’s face.’

No wonder the grandmother of the child raped by Wilson is outraged and has branded the ruling ‘disgusting’.

What kind of message is Lord Judge sending out by this scandalous decision?

He is completely missing the point.

Paedophiles aren’t people who are a bit creepy.

They are warped maniacs who steal the innocence of a child and who ruin lives, and more than that, they all too often go on to murder children.

As a reporter I have covered too many court cases where a paedophile was freed after a lenient sentence and went on to kill a child. It happens time and again.

That is the central issue the judge should have been addressing.

He should have used his powerful voice to send a message that there will be no hiding place for paedophiles when it comes to British justice.

What the public want and should expect is for there to be no grey area when it comes to child sex abuse.

But frankly, Lord Judge has completely failed in his task, and he has fallen so short of what is expected of him that the powers that be should be questioning the competence of this decision.

We all know that judges live in a different world from the rest of us.

We continually see that from the soft-touch sentences they hand down to thugs, drug dealers, and more often than not, to sex offenders.

They don’t seem to understand that we live in a world where because of the internet, paedophilia is thriving worldwide, giving anonymity to sex beasts and linking them to paedophile rings across the world where they can latch onto child porn and download sickening images of kids and babies being abused.

Children are at the mercy of international people trafficking. We regularly hear of kids coming here to be used as sex slaves. And there are more and more cases in the UK where children are abused by people within their own community.

What the government and the law lords should be doing is finding ways to seek the perverts out and put them behind bars.

They should be creating new laws to protect our children from them, not ways to make life easier for them or to consider their human rights.

Obviously we cannot keep paedophiles in prison forever.

So we should seriously be considering chemical castration, because the facts have shown that rehabilitation for sex offenders simply doesn’t work.

Wilson raped a precious little girl whose parents entrusted her into a place of safety.

He is a man who can never, ever be left alone with a child as long as he lives.

We have seen dozens of cases where paedophiles released from prison are housed next to schools or in blocks of flats where families live. They are supposed to be monitored, but it never happens and they go on to offend again. And, tragically, some go on to murder.

If ever there is a benchmark case for chemical castration for child sex attackers it is the case of Paul Wilson.

It works in other countries and in some states in America chemical castration has been used for years.

Wilson’s case was a clear opportunity for the court to make a statement that would matter and make our children safer.

Lord Chief Justice Judge has failed us all miserably.

Anna Smith's latest crime novel, To Tell The Truth, was published last week by Quercus

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14 February 2012 4:37 PM

There are few deeper agonies in life than watching an elderly parent fading away before your eyes.

Someone who was once indestructible, a real tour de force, who could make things happen when everyone’s backs were to the wall.

When you see them weak and totally dependent on you, it brings out in you a compassion and a depth of feeling you may not have believed you were capable of.

So when faced with this, we do not question what our role should be or how we are going to handle it.

We simply pick up from where they left off, and we look after them, the way they built their entire lives around caring for us.

But in doing this, we have come to live in dread of the moment we have to part with them into the care of the NHS, because when that happens the care we have given them is out of our hands.

We are powerless. And the real tragedy is we are literally waiting for them to die.

It’s not hysterical to say that, and it’s not an exaggeration. It is what is going on every day in NHS hospitals up and down the country.

An elderly person goes into hospital with a broken leg, or a minor infection, and so many of them never come back out.

You are forced to watch, frustrated, as the care they are entitled to, the care they deserve to be given, just isn’t there any more.

At last, a damning report on the elderly care in hospitals, has said something the rest of us have known for a very long time.

This isn’t just shameful neglect. It’s criminal neglect.

Old people are being denied the basic human needs to survive – eating, drinking and going to the toilet.

At a time when we are spending more money than ever on the NHS, the elderly are being left to die.

If there is one thing that will unite the country, it’s if someone steps in and picks up this issue by the scruff of the neck and deals with it.

Not because one day we’ll all be old and it could be us lying in a hospital bed. But because we have failed as a society if we are prepared to write off our elderly population so cheaply.

The horrific report by the Care Quality Commission found at least 20 hospitals where there was a disturbing catalogue of appalling conditions.

On some wards, inspectors saw frail patients rattling their bedrails or banging on water jugs to try to attract the attention of staff.

On others, nurses had ignored doctors’ instructions to put dehydrated patients on drips, abandoning them without fluids.

Elderly patients were faced with the indignity of using a commode next to their bed, because nobody was available to take them to the toilet.

Over four months, the care watchdog visited 100 hospitals to check they were meeting basic care standards – partly triggered by a campaign by the Daily Mail and the Patients Association following shocking revelations about hospital wards.

They found that one in five hospitals were actually breaking the law, that in 20 hospitals, nursing care was so poor that it breached the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Have we really reached such a sorry state in the NHS that we now have to start prosecuting hospitals for lack of care?

If we have, then perhaps once we start criminalising their failure in caring for the elderly, someone may actually take it seriously.

The truth is, prisoners - rapists, murderers and drug dealers - who routinely scream about their human rights being breached, are treated with more respect than the elderly in hospital.

It’s a disgrace and it shames us in the eyes of the world.

The elderly who are being neglected and denied the help they need, are people with a spirit and mentality so far removed from the trivia that occupies most of modern society.

They were from an era of thrift, where they would work until they dropped, and state handouts were something to feel ashamed about, rather than today when it’s a way of life.

They came from a time where there was no gadgetry, no distractions, where everything was about family life, and you kept it together through all the hard times.

They deserve everything we can give them in their hour of need.

Anything less than that is a shameful indictment of what we have become as a society.

Many of us have painful and bitter memories of our elderly parents’ final days being spent in the stifling atmosphere of an NHS hospital.

I was there day and night with my mother until she died last year from an infection that the nurses failed to detect, either because they were too busy with paperwork or rushed off their feet.

During my time in the ward, I saw patients buzzing for nurses who never arrived, old ladies having to use a commode at their bedside, others going hungry.

I saw one old lady lying for hours with the remains of her breakfast cereal spilled on her sheets as she slept. Nobody came to clean her and make her comfortable.

For relatives, like me, raging on the sidelines, it feels as though somewhere, there’s been a collective decision made that these old people are going to die anyway, so they are not a priority.

What the Care Quality Commission has found in a cross section of hospitals is not isolated. It is going on in almost every hospital up and down the country.

And every time there is a shocking report, the Health Secretary will trot out the same soundbite that things are going to change.

But if you were to walk into any geriatric ward in a month’s time, you’ll find nothing has changed.

A tiny coat still with the label still on it lay among the piles of rubbish.

Hainey was supposed to be off drugs – but the pictures tell a different story.

Next to the filth-strewn sofa, is a pile of used drugs paraphernalia, tin foil and a lighter.

And in the midst of all the squalor, a poignant reminder of what his life should have been for Declan - family snaps on the wall, a Christmas card including one which read ‘For a Special Grandson’.

As she was sentenced at the High Court in Glasgow, for murder and concealment of her son’s body, Lord Woolman told her: “Declan’s first birthday took place in April 2009, he appeared to have all his life in front of him.

“He was surrounded by a loving family and people thought you were a loving mother . A few months later he was dead.”

Now we learn that the Crown Office are considering a Fatal Accident Inquiry into Declan’s death.

So they should be. If they don’t have one, there out to be a public outcry asking why.

The cause of Declan’s death is not known, but he is said to have last been seen when he was 15 months old. His body was discovered in March 2010, when he would have been 23 months old.

We have a right to know the details of how in this day and age a child can be left dead for eight months and nobody intervened.

During the trial we heard various reasons why Hainey’s life descended into the spiral of decay and drugs.

Post natal depression was one that was offered in court.

But that is not the issue here.

The trial was told she had been put on a methadone programme but was signed off after social workers said she and Declan were doing well.

But Hainey then refused to co-operate with her drugs counsellor and made excuses over why no one could see the boy.

Why weren’t social workers breaking down her door?

How she came to be the kind of mother who abandoned her baby is anybody’s guess.

The issue, is where was the safety net that is supposed to save children like Hainey from a fate like this?

Time and again, our front pages scream outraged headlines when another toddler or child has been left to die.

And as inquiries and court cases unravel, we continually find that social workers were involved, but either missed the signs, or were too overworked.

How many more children have to die before the policy is changed not to give drug addict parents their children?

Just three years ago in Dundee, we had the tragic case of little Brandon Cunningham beaten stamped on by Robert Cunningham, the evil boyfriend of drug addict Heather Boyd. She had been selling her body for heroin the night her 23-month-old son died at the hands of her drug addict boyfriend.

The court heard that duodenum – part of the small intestine - was pressed against his spine until it burst.

We heard how doctors found at least 40 injuries on Brandon, including bruising and four fractured ribs.

In cases like this, there is always a knee jerk reaction asking where were the support teams.

Of course in the case of Brandon and Declan they utterly failed in their job, and their failure led to the deaths of two beautiful little boys.

It’s not more social workers we need to cope with the rise of child neglect through drugs and deprivation.

It’s a fundamental change in policy towards drug addicts and their children.

During years as a frontline reporter in Glasgow I worked on drugs investigation and spent time with families.

I have seen at first hand, young mothers swallowed up by the scourge of heroin, being backed by social workers because they want to keep families together.

Of course, somewhere in a drug addicts fuddled mind they will want to keep their children.

But the fact is, a heroin addict stumbles through each day shoplifting or working as a prostitute to feed their habit.

Making enough money for drugs is their first priority – not their child.

I once went to a house where the prostitute heroin addict mother was selling sex for a fiver a time, to get enough money to get her portable TV back because she was getting her little girl for the weekend. She had given the television to her drug dealer to pay off some of her drug debts. She was living in squalor, yet social workers wanted to keep the family together.

I have no doubt the woman loved her toddler. But she loved heroin more.

When are we going to realise allowing drug addict parents to keep their children just doesn’t work?

It will never work.

A drug addict will sell everything to get their next fix. They will steal from their parents, sell the furniture - they will sell their child if it comes to it.

And as is tragically obvious from Hainey’s case, they will leave their child to die, because drug addicts are not thinking on any rational level.

We continually hear of people turned down for adoption because they are too fat, too old, the wrong race.

Yet social workers who make decisions that don’t just change lives but that can actually save lives or condemn a child to death, just don’t see it, that a child would have a better chance if it was taken away from drug addict parents.

If a drug addict was clear of drugs for three years, then perhaps they deserve the chance of restricted, supervised access to their child.

We cannot keep taking chances with children’s lives by prioritising the need for a family to be together.

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10 October 2011 6:16 PM

They are the brightest we’ve got – the young people we send out into the world to carry our hopes for the future.

They will be the doctors, the teachers, the scientists, the politicians, and we have invested everything we have in them.

It is them, not us, who will run the country, as and when they are required to step up to the plate.

But one look at the streets of shame in Cardiff city centre, as half-naked, bladdered students go wild, should make us shiver.

This is our future.

And before these university students have even lifted a book or sat in a lecture hall, they’ve already graduated with honours in the booze stakes.

It’s Freshers week in university cities and towns across the UK.

Great swathes of students take to the streets for the annual drunken binge that marks the start of the university year.

Time was when Freshers week was full of youngsters letting their hair down as they made new friends and revelled in the freedom that student life affords.

Anyone who has ever been to university will tell you stories of their own partying in a week where what went on in the tour stayed on the tour.

But this is different. This is madness. This is Carnage UK.

So toxic, it’s even got it’s own title.

It’s a shameful public display of binge-drinking and debauchery from people with no regard for anyone but themselves.

You would think that students being students - young people with minds of their own – they would not want to be a part of an organisation. You would think they were too rebellious to allow themselves to be lead.

But when it comes to binge drinking, they follow like sheep from bar to bar, knocking back cheap booze till they drink themselves into oblivion.

The first of the annual vomitfests kicked off in Cardiff on Sunday, held by Carnage UK, which runs cheap alcohol tours for undergraduates across the country.

It’s run by Varsity Leisure, a notorious organisation, which cynically cashes in on the booze-binging culture, despite suggesting that it encourages 'all of our customers to drink responsibly.'

If this was even remotely true, then why organise an alcohol tour with the title Carnage UK?

As the title implies, it’s an invitation get completely wrecked as cheaply as possible.

In Cardiff, the theme was Nympho Nurses and Dirty Doctors.

In a night of shame, it produced shocking pictures of young girls, barely wearing any clothes, carried unconscious before 10pm. There were people urinating in the street in front of horrified onlookers, other drunken couples making out on doorway.

And these pictures will be flashed around the globe at a time of world economic recession.

While these teenagers are vomiting drunk, their parents were probably at home worrying if they can keep a roof over their heads.

The rest of us are carrying the can and paying our taxes in the hope we can send out the next generation to be the best they can be.

Have these bright young things no regard for anyone but themselves?

What is wrong with young people of today, that they can no longer go out and enjoy a few drinks?

If we’re honest with ourselves, plenty of us have had our share of youthful partying – myself included.

I grew up in the newspaper industry at a time when grizzled hacks kick-started their day with a coffee and shot of booze - then continued until the end of their shift.

I stood at the graveside of too many colleagues who were dead by the time they were 40 years old – so it didn’t take long for the message to get through.

But still, even that level of boozing that went on is a patch on drunkenness of today’s young people.

Whatever people drank thirty years ago, you can double it and add a few shots.

It isn’t about partying any more, it’s about getting off their faces.

I can’t understand why students, of all people, cannot see how wrong this is.

These are not kids from hard up backgrounds who have been raised with no hopes or expectation, and are trying to blot out their day.

If they’ve made it all the way to university, chances are they’ve had a decent upbringing, parents who struggled to give them the best, sent them to university so they would have a better start in life.

They’re not coming from the boarded up inner-city housing schemes where they have to punch above their weight to make it.

They are privileged individuals.

Despite the row over student fees, they continue to be privileged, because the life of a student is a privileged one.

No wonder they get little public sympathy when they take to the streets in protest.

These people are our future, yet they are behaving as though life is one big 18-30s holiday on the Costa.

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05 October 2011 3:59 PM

Just when you think a few months might pass without Ryanair sneaking in another rip-off, up pops Budget airline boss Michael O’Leary with his latest ploy.

He may be grinning for his trademark thumbs-up pose with his offer of a ‘Cash Passport’. But Michael O’Greedy is really sticking up two fingers to the millions of loyal customers who trawl the Ryanair website hoping for cheap flights, when the reality is there is no such thing any more.

Gone are the days when you could snap up a flight to Barcelona or one of the the Costas for £20, and it seemed that Ryanair had really opened up a whole new world for us.

Their brash boss O’Leary’s in-your-face marketing style used to amuse, as he dared the major airlines to take him on.

Ryanair, he declared, is the only low fares airline.

We often wondered how they could do it – but we didn’t care.

Ryanair packed their aircraft, and you could find yourself in Bratislava for around a fiver, wondering what you were doing in Bratislava in the first place, but couldn’t resist a bargain!

It was great fun – until the name Ryanair became synonymous with rip-off and hidden surcharges.

Now, when we see a flight for £35, we know by the time we get the booking reference confirmed, it will suddenly have jumped to at least £90 between luggage, check-in, administration fee, and a levy to cover compensation costs.

Flying has become the most miserable experience these days because of airport security. But when you travel with a budget airline like Ryanair, you actually feel under threat before you even get to the check-in desk.

I travel by air all the time, often with Ryanair, and I remember when online check-in and printed boarding passes first came in, how it caught everyone on the hop. There would be an elderly couple in the queue who hadn’t read the small print, and were suddenly faced with £34 because they didn’t have a printed boarding pass – something that is now being challenged after a Spanish court ruled earlier this year that it was unlawful.

Then it was luggage restrictions, where bags are weighed at check-in, and if you’re a bikini overweight it would cost you.

Next, was the size of your carry-on bag which has to meet strict guidelines, for no other reason than they can charge you if it doesn’t.

But one thing all these rip-off and restrictions has done, is brought out the Dunkirk spirit in all of us.

These days, in the queue at the departure gate, passengers stand supporting each other with nods and words of advice, as though they’re about to go through enemy lines, when in fact they’re only going to Malaga for a holiday.

The groundstaff march up and down like the Gestapo with a Ryanair cardboard contraption.

If it doesn’t fit you’re your hand luggage, you’re captured and have to surrender it to the hold for a whopping £40.

I’m usually like a Land Army girl, wearing a safari waistcoat, stuffed with everything I can’t squeeze into my hand luggage. But it will only be a matter of time before Ryanair starts to go through your pockets, and if you’ve got a pair of leggings stuffed in there, it will be classed as luggage and you’ll have to pay.

It starts to feel like if you escape through the line towards the aircraft, you’re waiting for them to call you back and punish you!

We put up with it, because one thing about Ryanair is they do get you there on time, and plenty of travellers will say if you read the small print, and travel light as O’Leary says, you have nothing to moan about.

But this latest Cash Passport offer is a real rip-off.

Ryanair are charging £6 for a special pre-payment card, so you don’t have to stump for the £6 each way administration fee when you book your tickets - which for a family of four is £48.

But you have to load this card with cash, and a rolling fee of £2.50 will be stuck on it if you don’t use it for six months. Before you know where you are it will cost you – even if you don’t travel!

Not surprisingly the Cash Passport has been condemned by consumer watchdogs, and Which? says it’s ‘an insult to UK consumers who can’t avoid such fees’.

Ryanair already had their own card for customers wanting to avoid the administration fees, but changed it from the Electron to MasterCard. So what is the point of a Cash Passport?

There should be a law to prevent airlines describing themselves as budget airlines, then racking up the costs at every turn.

Michael O’Leary will stop at nothing to grab more money off passengers – from the £3 cardboard cup of hot water and tea bag, to the overpriced paninis.

He’s even threatened to charge us for using the toilet.

Of course, if you're Gerard Depardieu, that won't really be a problem!

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03 October 2011 4:59 PM

The X-Factor meltdown of 16-year-old Luke Lucas as he was rejected for the finals, isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed kids fall apart on live TV talent contests.

And it won’t be the last.

These annual sobfests, as wannabe popstars weep as though it was the end of the world, actually feed on the publicity when a kid like Luke breaks down.

It can’t be described as anything other than exploitation by producers who are driven by ratings and not much else.

The X-Factor was already heavily criticised for bullying vulnerable Ceri Rees, 54, allowing her through the auditions process four times in six years, only to rejected by the judges each time.

But when it comes to exploiting youngsters it’s a different matter.

The show is now under fire from children’s charities, because poor Luke was ditched by mentor Gary Barlow after fluffing his auditon for selection in the final four.

Before he went up to sing in front of Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, the likeable teenager was already close to tears, hyped up and telling us: “I can’t believe how much I want this.”

But as soon as Luke opened his mouth to sing, it was clear his timing was out and he was completely flat.

You couldn’t fail to feel anything but sympathy for the lad, who seconds later, was seen being comforted by another contestant, weeping and distraught at the rejection.

Poor Luke. By now he’ll be on his way back to school, his dreams of superstardom in tatters.

Sadly, few people will remember him for his first fantastic audition which took him to boot camp in LA.

And the X-Factor bosses certainly won’t lose much sleep over how he copes with the trauma of rejection.

I can’t help thinking that every time a kid like Luke collapses in tears, producers of the show are watching the ratings figures go through the roof.

It doesn’t matter to them if viewers feel Luke’s pain as he tearfully says he just wants to go home. As long as they’re watching, that’s all that matters.

In the wake of Luke’s meltdown, Gary Barlow has admitted that 16 is just too young to be in the competition, and has declared: “I have a responsibility here as well. It was too much for him – no wonder he cracked under the pressure.”

Well, why didn’t the Take That superstar think about this before?

If stars like Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams, stood their ground, perhaps the X-Factor bosses wouldn’t allow young teenagers like Luke into the competition at all.

Of course, they can say that it’s the bosses of the TV show who call the shots. But you can bet that if Gary Barlow insisted he wouldn’t be involved unless they raised the age for contestants to 18, they would think again.

That’s what real responsibility is for people like Barlow.

But what are the parents thinking about that they encourage their youngsters onto shows like the X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent?

I can understand if you have a bright, talented child who wants to sing or perform.

But gone are the days when it was about a young person honing their craft and talent.

Now it’s all about instant success.

If you were to ask half of the young kids who go onto these shows what are their dreams, they will tell you they want to be a star. They want to be famous because many of their role models are famous, but have got there with very little effort.

Each X-Factor step sees a procession of hopefuls dissolve into tears saying they cannot bear to go back to their ordinary lives of being anonymous, and that this break on X-Factor is all that matters to them in the world.

I often wonder what these people would be like faced with real heartbreak and trauma in their lives, such as the tragedies we see on our television every day around the world - homes swept away in tsunamis, loved ones buried under rubble, teenagers massacred.

As a child, sometimes have to learn the hard way that life is going to be tough.

Unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you learn very early in life that you cannot have some of the things you want.

Time was, when that experience used shape the lives of people. Through hardship and struggle, they studied or worked to achieve things. They formed bands, sang in clubs and went out to search for that success, learning about life along the way.

But now, kids want it all and they want it now.

And shows like the X-Factor wrongly convince them that it’s all within touching distance, when in reality it’s not.

You don’t have to look very far to see X-Factor casualties littered along the way – instant winners who are now performing on cruise ships or half empty bars, trading on their fleeting success.

With very few exceptions reality shows don’t make huge stars that will stay the course.

If Luke Lucas has learned anything from his X-Factor experience it is that life is tough, but sometimes good things happen.

But he is too young to have learned it under the gaze of millions of TV viewers.

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30 September 2011 10:49 AM

Sometimes it’s not enough to say you’re sorry. Especially when you’ve buried your little boy because of the basic failure of medical staff.

Sorry will never fill the gaping hole in the life of Abby Podmore, whose toddler son Alfie died of pneumonia, three days after a doctor sent him from hospital saying it was just a virus.

Of course, the apology from Birmingham Children’s Hospital is unequivocal, and their regret is not in doubt.

The statement from Dr Vin Diwakar, chief medical officer, declared: "Thousands of clinical judgements are made in our hospital every day, and sometimes, when those judgements are wrong, it can lead to tragic consequences, as it did in the case of Alfie.

"We're truly sorry for the unimaginable distress the family have gone through and have ensured that the doctor concerned has been given additional support and supervision since the incident."

That will give cold comfort to dental nurse Abby who is left with only treasured videos and photographs charting the short life of the child she adored.

But what was staggering as the inquest into the death of Alfie in February, unfolded, is that while 21-year-old Abby was still reeling from the shock at discovering Alfie in his bed, she was actually marched off to the police station placed under arrest on suspicion of murdering him.

This is not a 21-year-old woman of the type we read about all too often, whose child died because of her negligence.

This is a doting young mum who had been so worried about her son’s raging temperature a few days earlier that she bundled him up and took him to hospital.

In a written statement to the Birmingham Coroner Aidan Cotter, Abby, from Quinton, said that her son had been ill while at nursery on February 2.

A paediatrican with eight years experience, diagnosed a virus, and sent Alfie home with an antacid.

The coroner concluded it was a ‘clinical misjudgement’ and that if the child had been given antibiotics he may have lived.

People like Abby have to trust the medics, because they have no-one else to trust when their child is ill.

Because of the doctor’s diagnosis Abby went home, hoping Alfie was merely suffering from a 24 hour bug.

But three days later, she found him in his bed, cold and not breathing. She tried in vain to revive him, giving him CPR while she waited for the ambulance to arrive.

What happened next is shocking.

Police arrived after the ambulance, and Abby told how she was told to change out of her night clothes.

Fearing the worst, she wanted to be with her son.

But Abby was treated like a criminal.

Within minutes, two police riot vans arrived with 15 officers, and neighbours watched as Abby and her partner were taken from the house by police.

They were put in separate cells and though her partner was released she was held in a cell for 24 hours.

This was a grieving mother in shock and bewilderment at her son’s death.

Eventually, she was released, once a post mortem established that the cause of death could have had nothing to do with her.

We can only imagine how she felt, not just being robbed of her son and suspected of murder, but not even been given the chance to grieve for him until they finally allowed her to see his body 10 days later.

But how can it be that the authorities don’t talk to each other before they go wading into the misery of grieving couple who have just lost their son?

All too often we hear of children who were on social services list dying from neglect or at the hands of a parent or partner.

Only last week the body of a child found decomposing for three years while the mother lived downstairs with her other children.

Police may say they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

But Alfie wasn’t on any social services list. He was al little boy who was loved and cherished.

Surely the police should know better than to jump to the conclusion that the mother had killed her own baby.

They’ve shown more restraint in a raid on the home of a terrorist suspect than they did with this poor mum.

Abby will carry the crushing feeling of loss for the rest of her life every time she looks at the video of her energetic little boy’s sweet smile.

She is heavily pregnant with baby who was conceived just days before Alfie died.

She says she believes it’s a gift from Alfie, who wanted to let her know she was a good mother and deserves to be a mum again.

It’s a heartbreaking story a family who have been failed by everyone they should have been able to believe in.

West Midlands Police have launched an investigation, and you can guarantee that they too will be covered in shame and will apologise for the monstrous way they treated Abby.

But it’s not enough

It will never be enough.

The new baby Abby is carrying will be loved as much as Alfie.

But you cannot replace a child who was snatched from you because of the ineptitude of the people you have no option but to trust.

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28 September 2011 11:28 AM

The curtain has come up on what is looking like the only show in town.

The grotesque image of Michael Jackson’s corpse lying on a bed with tubing over his face, was the opening scene on what is being billed as the trial of the century.

Not even in the weird world that Jacko lived in, could he have imagined the circus that continues to surround him from beyond the grave.

Not even the producers of his final show, which he died before he performed, could have organised a bigger premiere than this.

With the Jackson brothers and his sisters all in the Los Angeles court, as well as his tearful parents, the trial of his physician Dr Conrad Murphy looks set to run and run.

The words show trial don’t even do justice to what is going on here.

Because no matter how the facts of this trial unfold in the coming weeks, it already looks like more of a show than an attempt to get at the truth.

In fact it’s hard to imagine what can actually come out, given the evidence from all sides that has been bandied all over the newspapers and television since Jackson died.

But whatever is revealed in evidence, there can be no justification for showing the picture of Jackson on his deathbed.

Why was it important to put this photograph up there for public consumption at the start of what is supposed to be a criminal trial?

It’s not as though there is ever going to be any doubt in the minds of the jurors that Michael Jackson is dead.

The prosecution could have ensured that this particular photograph was shown only to the jurors, so you have to ask why have it out there at the opening of the trial.

Clearly there is no reason in the pursuit of justice – and the bottom line is that the photograph is there is to hype up the story.

Apart from anything else, nobody seems to have considered the effects on his three children. They will have to live with their own images of that morning their father died in front of them, without having to see the picture of his corpse plastered all over newspapers and television.

Over the years we’ve had enough glimpses of justice American style, with the trials of high profile celebrities, to see that increasingly the lines have become blurred by what is good television and just what is justice.

But if ever anything should open our eyes to the road we may be going down when we allow cameras into court, it is this lurid extravaganza.

Of course, to begin with, once this controversial government decision is put into practice in England and Wales, cameras will be confined to the court of appeal for civil and criminal appeals.

The filming will only be of the judges’ summary remarks – which could be the judges summing up or the judge’s sentencing remark if there is a conviction.

But you only need to look at Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s words that the government would 'look to expand to the crown court later,' to know where this could possibly end up.

I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years, once televised court cases have been rolled out, that it will be creep into other areas.

The strict rules of reporting of trials has always been one of the cornerstones of British justice.

We don’t have these Hollywood style scenes where defence lawyers and the prosecutors go toe to toe outside the court before the trial is even started.

Inside the court room, of course, there will be photographs that will shock.

As a reporter, I sat through many High Court murder trials and witnessed jurors blanche when they were handed scenes-of-crime photographs of victims.

Jurors would sometimes collapse at colour pictures of the appalling injuries to victims of murder, rape, and child killings, to name but few.

They are photographs you hope in your lifetime you never have to see – and unless you are a juror or in the police, you shouldn’t have to see them.

Scenes-of-crime photographs are productions used as part of the trial, but should only be shown to the jury, unless, after the trial the prosecution wish to release them to emphasise the enormity of the crime.

That’s how it should have been at the Jackson trial.

But it isn’t justice that has motivated the release of this photograph.

Jackson’s frozen corpse has ensured that his trial capture the attention of the world.

But it always would have anyway - without the use of shock TV, which is exactly what this is.

Ken Clarke says cameras in court will increase public confidence in the system.

But as the Jackson opening scenes show, there is a vast difference between justice being seen to be done and ‘justice’ viewed for entertainment.

*Anna Smith’s novel, The Dead Won’t Sleep is published in paperback on October 13. You can read more about her on her website..www.annasmithscotland.com

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27 September 2011 7:37 PM

And you believe them, because you want to believe, you have to believe, that the NHS will step in and look after that cherished loved one who has never asked for help in their lives.

But the bottom line is they simply cannot do it.

Dr Carter doesn’t pull any punches in his words.

He said: ‘If you have a 24-bed ward and have got five nurses and everybody is having lunch at the same time and half the patients need feeding, it becomes difficult to get it all done.

‘If someone is coming in and sitting with their loved one, they are going to have the focused dedicated time. You get this business of wards, very, very busy people, patients dying to go to the loo, elderly patients wetting themselves, then they lie there feeling embarrassed – and it is about helping gran get out and go to the loo.’

I don’t need Dr Carter to tell me this.

I know this, because I’ve been there, too many times in recent years, sitting at the bedside of my mother, who died a year ago tomorrow. (wed)

In the years before she died, sadly, she had been hospitalised with various problems, the same as several of the elderly patients in the ward.

So I was able to witness at first hand the pressure nursing staff are under trying to answer the needs of geriatric patients. I was impressed by some nursing staff, but to be honest, I was less than impressed by the attitude of others.

Because I was able to, I spent most of my days in hospital, so it was a real eye opener for me.

On a daily basis, the hot food would arrive and be dished up by ancilliary staff.

There would be some 90-year-old woman with a broken hip, barely able to sit up, or a patient with dementia unable to feed herself, therefore a nurse would come in and take the time to spoon-feed her.

But invariably, an alarm would go off in another room, and the nurse would disappear leaving the patient with her half eaten meal. By the time she returned, if she returned, the food would be cold, and the old person would have fallen asleep hungry.

I saw this happen in almost every meal time during the weeks I was there to help my mother with her meals.

No wonder the figures show that elderly patients end up malnourished after a stay in hospital.

The very idea that an old person goes to sleep hungry because they cannot feed themselves strikes at the very heart of a system that is supposed to care for people every step of the way.

But we cannot just heap the blame on the nurses for this. They are busy, working flat out most of the time.

Whether we like it or not, this is where we are in the NHS and the care for the elderly.

Dr Carter has come under fire from patients associations for his suggestion.

But is asking relatives to give a helping hand so wrong?

In Spain, if you are long term in hospital, your family is expected to come in to care for you.

It’s the same in Greece and many other countries.

There is nothing terribly wrong with relatives working out a rota so they can spend more time in hospital.

But what happens to the old people who have no relatives.?

I recall one frail old lady who had no family and seldomreceived a visitor, and it was heartbreaking watching her try to struggle at mealtimes.

But if we simply accept it as a given that we take over the job that used to be done by nursing staff, we have to wonder where it will all end.

We can bang our heels on the floor, because we pay a fortune for an NHS that meets fewer of our needs every day, but we have to be there for our old people.

I would encourage people to make their presence felt when an elderly relative is in hospital.

I did that on a daily basis – yet my poor mum still died because nursing staff, either because they were too busy or had just given up, failed to spot an infection that was raging inside her.

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There are clearly two types of morons who will never be able to fit into the kind of society most of us want to be a part of.

There are the moronic fathers - and the mothers - who allow their little boys to step into a cage to take part in this barbaric display.

And there are the repulsive lowlife adults who roar them on in the booze fuelled atmosphere of a British social club.

One child psychologist has declared it as the modern day equivalent of bear baiting.

But it’s actually worse than that.

It’s child abuse. And at the very least the parents of eight-year-old Lucas Deelay and Kian Markinson, who were put up like prize fighter for entertainment, should be getting is a visit from the social services.

And the licensing board who control the Labour Social Club in Preston should be taking a long hard look at whether this club deserves to hold a licence at all.

What’s also disturbing is that it’s all perfectly legal, so police can do nothing about it.

The video on the webside of Reps Retribution has been roundly condemned by everyone from medical experts to people in boxing and martial arts, outraged at the sickening scenes.

Even celebrity cage fighter Alex Reid criticised it - though is problem wasn’t the fighting itself but the fact that it was in an adult and, possibly alcohol fuelled atmosphere.

The footage of the fight between eight-year-olds Lucas Deelay and Kian Markinson shows the bare-chested boys using arm locks and choke holds, grappling on the floor and wearing no protective gear.

Apart from anything else, there’s the prospect of a video like this being leered at by the paedophiles who trawl the net looking for just these kind of images of children.

In the video, the lads are paraded up to the cage like something out of Rocky.

In between bouts a half naked girl strides around the cage to the wolf whistles of the crowd who paid £25 a ticket at Greenlands Labour Club.

At one point during the bout, Lucas – nicknamed the Bone Crusher - is seen crying and the commentator can be heard saying the fight ‘needs stopping’. But the boy is ordered to carry on.

The bout ends with Lucas in tears.

These are children. Lucas is a little boy, obviously overwhelmed by the occasion, and perhaps the disappointment of not living up to his father’s expectation.

It is nothing short of cruelty, and the fact that police can take no action opens the prospect of more of these child baiting bouts popping up in every pocket of deprivation across the country.

Kian’s father, Nick Hartley, 33, maintains there is no harm in cage fighting and that the children were never in danger.

Of his son, he says: ‘If he wasn’t cage fighting, he would probably be chucking stones at buses and giving people grief. But now he has learned some respect and he would rather go training than play out.’

Is that really the best he can offer his son? A public brawl in a cage instead of some fatherly advice?

Michelle Anderson, who owns the Labour Club also defended the fights.

“There’s nothing wrong with it. Would people rather these kids were out on the streets with guns and knives?"

She says the fight was a demonstration – no doubt to see if there was an appetite for more of the same.

Organiser Stephen Nightingale, 28, a professional cage fighter and gym owner, said competitions started at age five.

He said: "The kids are not getting hit or anything at all when they are under age. We do not let them strike - punch and kick - until the age of 14 or 15."

Surely there is more people can offer their kids than this.

I can see the argument about sport giving kids a discipline and a respect for others and themselves.

But cage fighting is an ‘anything goes’ primitive and bloody activity, and even respected martial arts experts have said it should be reserved for experienced adults with a background in boxing and martial arts.

This cannot be compared to boxing in any shape or form.

My brother was a professional boxer, and when he was an amateur I used to go to bouts where youngsters were on the bill.

And there was a competitive atmosphere among the youths and the boxers were cheered on by family and friends.

I remember feeling sorry for the boys around 12 or 13 years old who would perhaps emerge with a bloody nose having lost a fight.

But these were youngsters dreaming of being world champions, trained and honed in the discipline of boxing gyms in a controlled way – no thrown into a cage and told to fight.

I saw Nick Hartley on television, saying his son wants to fight, while the boy sat yawning next to him.

Can’t this man see beyond that the boy’s bravado, that a child will always try to please it’s dad if he thinks the dad will admire him and pay him attention.

I shudder to think what is gong on in these kids’ minds when they’re being paraded like prize fighters when they should be out playing with their friends.

There has to be more to offer our kids than the promise they might be the next Alex Reid.

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ANNA SMITH

Anna Smith is an award winning journalist and has spent a lifetime in daily newspapers as a frontline journalist reporting from all over the world.
She has covered wars across the world as well as major investigations and news stories from Dunblane, to Northern Ireland, Kosovo and 9/11, and has also worked as a columnist with the Sunday Mirror and the News of the World.
She writes novels full time now and lives between her homes in Scotland and the West of Ireland – and also in Spain to escape the British weather.
Her debut crime novel, The Dead Won’t Sleep, is the first in a series of crime novels featuring Rosie Gilmour, a Glasgow journalist, trying to expose corruption in the establishment.
It was published in June and will be available in paperback from October 13 in all bookshops and online.
You can read more about Anna as well as further blogs on her website at www.annasmithscotland.com and
www.quercusbooks.co.uk